Satisfaction with pay-TV grows, but Android box users down

A perception survey carried out between November 2019 and April 2020 among over 870 respondents has found a 10-point rise in households with a bundled pay-TV subscription in a bundle, up to 77% from 67% in 2017.

A further 3% of respondents to the Malta Communications Authority survey intend on purchasing a bundle-based TV subscription in the coming months. But 19% of survey respondents said they owned an IPTV-Android box, down 4 percentage points compared to 2017.

88% of those with an Android box believe that what they get via this medium is a good alternative to standard pay-Tv, mainly because of a better channel line-up. Around 8% of survey respondents having a pay-Tv subscription have also indicated their intention of acquiring an IPTV-Android box over the next year.

The share of respondents saying they are highly satisfied with pay-TV rose from 23% in 2017 to 56% in the 2020 survey. An additional 38% say they are satisfied with the quality of service. Just around 1% of survey respondents say they are highly dissatisfied with the service attributing ‘Frequent Disconnections’ as the main reason for their response.

Whilst 44% of respondents do not know their monthly expenditure on the pay-TV service, the current survey shows more people knowledgeable on this variable than was the case in 2017. In fact, the share of survey respondents saying they are aware of their pay-TV monthly expenditure increased from 45% to 55%.

Slightly more than half of the latter respondents consider their monthly pay-TV expenditure as reasonable. The main reason cited for not knowing their pay-TV expenditure was that the service is purchased in a bundle.

14% of survey respondents say they watch Internet-TV channels. However, compared to the 2017 survey, the current exercise shows a 20 percentage point drop in such respondents. 67% of respondents watching internet TV see this platform as a good alternative to Pay-Tv, up 37 percentage points from 2017.

Just less than half the respondents stated that they did not have a DAB+ radio set, whilst 18%, representing an increase of 4 percentage points over 2017, said that they had the device. From those owing a DAB+ radio the majority (97%) of respondents have declared their satisfaction with its quality of service. Also, those who do have the radio; 45%, 30% and 33% said that their device was installed at home, in the car, and both at home and in car respectively.